I don’t usually post stuff like this, but it popped up on an old feed last night and I liked it. It was from a book we did a few years ago, a free ebook. Shug, one of the characters in The Truth Is In The Water was one of my favorites, a good guy, a genuine hero. The link to the free amazon download is below…
“My dad, he was with the Black Panthers in Oakland in the 60s. He knew all about how close and fragile that poverty line was. He was arrested, many times, finally given a choice of prison or the Army. He chose the Army. He got his ass blown the fuck up around March 1968, Hue Province, Vietnam. The Panthers, they took me and my mom in. I was a baby, one or two years old. They protected us like family, they cared for us. I took a lot of who I am from them. Then my mom, she got lost to the drugs, heroin, she was broken after my dad died. I was talking about my dad to his brother, Charlie, years later, years after dad was killed. Uncle Charlie said, ‘The saddest thing about America is mom and apple pie and baseball never sent a man to war. Ain’t nobody’s Uncle Sam ever sent nobody to war, man. Senators and Presidents and gun and bomb and helicopter manufacturers sent men, like your daddy, to go die. Mom and apple pie, they just sell the shit. The war in our neighborhood is no different. It’s someone sold as the good guys versus somebody’s bad guys, it’s always someone selling something. The cops and all of us down here in the neighborhoods, we’re just players in somebody else's game.’
“The cops in Oakland were raising hell on earth in our neighborhood. It was all out war. Truckloads of cops with shields and helmets in riot gear, clubs and guns come through the street busting heads open, or worse. The leaders of the community were getting arrested all the time. What little stability I’d found in the family of friends disappeared. I was left to fend for myself on the streets, terrified all the time. I stumbled through life for a while. Just a kid, like ten or eleven years old. It’s the same bullshit then as now. It’s all the spin. The cops in riot gear coming through busting up the kitchens and the few clinics caring for the people, feeding homeless kids, the news called those people terrorists. Let me tell you, when I saw that army jumping out of those SWAT trucks, I was pretty fucking terrified. I was never once terrified by someone giving me a plate of food or a clean shirt to wear or medicine when I was sick. Armed soldiers in my street pointing guns at me? That was terrifying.
That’s about all I have for this week. Here are some free books to check out and don’t forget to click the images to open the promos, and this is the link to The Truth Is In The Water if you want to check it out: https://www.amazon.com/Truth-Water-William-Lobb-ebook/dp/B08BCNZRMF
Stay safe, it’s getting weird out there!
Bill
I'm sorry your life was so hard Bill and even more so that you lost your father at such a young age. From what I have seen and read in news articles, I agree that the attitude of your law enforcement personnel doesn't seem to have changed much. Take care.
Indeed Bill,
In the UK it’s always been there, kept undercover:
Until today.
Your lovely American Duchess, Meghan, along with her Royal Prince, has opened many eyes now.